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Friday, November 2, 2012

New toy ...

Mum brought it down for me when she came to stay after my oppie.
She was only here a week, so it was a crash course in learning all the wonderful things a knitting machine can do.

It's quite a technical piece of equipment, but once we got going I sure learned a thing or two.

Firstly that me and punch lace will not be friends...and secondly that my ignorant attitude about machine knit pieces being somehow easy to create was wrong.

It is a manual machine operated by pushing that big carriage with the handle back and forth. the wider your piece the longer your push. One push left equals one row. A scarf 1 metre and half long equals 900 rows. 900 times someone has to push that baby left and right. It sure does work out the arms and the core muscles and over do it ... ie: try and do 7 scarves in a day and you'll cause yourself some harm.
Mum will testify to that!

From what I understand there are electronic ones out there, bigger and more expensive and the machine does the back and forth by itself. So I guess to me, this still feels handmade and quite labor intensive even though it is way quicker than hand knitting.

Definitely worth the time dusting it off and learning how to use it.

I have been experimenting with some lovely 3ply cotton that I got from Spottie and came up with these goodies.

Necklaces and summer scarves.

The options are endless and quite possibly I have opened myself up to a new medium that I might lose my self in for a while.

I'm excited to try 1ply, multiple colors as one, metallics and patterns.
Did I say you can make your own patterns.
Yup ...sure can. Could put your name on stuff if you wanted to!

My mother-in-law had her machine shipped from Germany when she immigrated here in the early fifties - it is still in use by her daughter. It always seemed very complicated to me but she made the children marvelous jumpers on it! Good luck Jay - I can see you are gonna make some fun things with your new toy!